


The Eventual and Tragic End of Sherlock Holmes

by someonelsesheart



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dark, Deathfic, Did I Mention Angst?, Drug Use, John and Mycroft brolove, Love, M/M, a tiny bit au, all i needed to know, and...some more angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-01 02:30:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/350962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/someonelsesheart/pseuds/someonelsesheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The nurses and doctors tell John ‘extraordinary’ and ‘a real fighter’ and all sorts of distant comforts, but John is also a doctor and he knows the likeliness of somebody surviving cocaine overdose as extreme as Sherlock’s.</p>
<p>He nods to all the doctors and smiles at all the nurses and when he grows too tired, he sleeps and when he grows too hungry, he eats. There is nothing more and nothing less – just Sherlock, the only thing the matters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Eventual and Tragic End of Sherlock Holmes

**Author's Note:**

> Any medical inaccuracies are my own fault and I take full responsibility for them. Do not read if you are offended or may be triggered by talk of drug use or overdose.
> 
> Based very briefly on 'Forever and Always' by Parachute - I recommend listening to that while reading this. Atmosphere, y'know.

He can’t think.

His mind is always running a hundred miles an hour, but this is different. This is white hot delusion. He thinks about how the carpet really needs hoovering, and how there’s a spot of acid on the carpet that’s going to burn through the whole floor if he doesn’t clear it up soon, but he can’t _think._ He can’t _observe._

He’s burning and he _can’t breathe_ and his hands shake terribly as he grapples for a handhold in the sofa, but that doesn’t matter, none of that matters, all that matters is that _he can’t think and it’s going to drive him mad._

“Are you trying,” John is shouting, “to fucking _kill yourself_?”

Sherlock grabs onto the sofa, trying to pull himself up. The world spins. The ceiling is a million colours of white, even though he knows that’s impossible because white isn’t a million colours, white is just _white,_ it’s just –

The beeping of mobile phone keys. Hands beneath his head, on his neck, checking his pulse. Lips on his forehead as the dial tone plays, and John cups his hands around the phone as if he’s praying. “It’s okay,” he’s murmuring, to Sherlock but mostly to himself. “Fuck. It’s okay. You can’t die, because you’re Sherlock. You _won’t_ die, damnit, don’t you _dare,_ you bastard, you –”

And then a woman’s voice is asking John questions, questions that don’t matter but _do_ matter, don’t they, if John thinks they matter, and Sherlock thinks that if they mattered surely he’d know it, surely he’d know things that matter, surely he’d –

_Breathe._

God, John, I need you. Help me, John. John, it’s dark and there’s nowhere to run and I can’t even deduce my way out of this situation because it’s my own _mind –_ it’s my own _body,_ I can’t fight myself, damnit, I can’t _fight –_

_Please._ Muffled sobs. Teardrops on his cheek, not his, but he wishes they were, wishes he could cry, wishes he could show John – just – just _show him._ _Please, Sherlock, please, please, I need you. I need you so much. I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry, I try not to, but I_ do, fuck it, _I need you more than I need anything else in the world._

*

He won’t wake up.

He won’t _wake up._

“No,” John shouts, trying to get to Sherlock. He’s spread out on a stretcher, limp and unresponding. They’re carting him into an ambulance, and they won’t let John go. The paramedics are gripping him, pulling him back, looking at him with sad eyes and murmuring meaningless words like ‘I’m sorry, sorry, sir, so sorry’ and ‘Do you want us to call you a taxi, sir? Sir?’

Finally, he swallows past the lump in his throat and spits out, “Yes.” He chokes on the word. “Please.”

*

Sherlock dreams he’s standing on a building -...a hospital roof? Moriarty – _Moriarty? Moriarty’s dead. This is impossible. No... –_ is standing next to him on a hospital roof. He points his gun at Sherlock and says “Jump.”

John looks up at him from the ground, eyes filled with tears.

Sherlock shakes his head.

“Don’t you – don’t you _dare_ jump, Sherlock!” John shouts. “Fuck, it’s not worth it. Please. We’ll get you help. We’ll – _anything,_ just – please.”

John can’t see Moriarty, then. This seems perfectly plausible to Dream Sherlock.

“Jump,” Jim Moriarty hisses, with a reptilian twist of his head and a smug, _oh so smug_ smirk. “Jump, or I’ll shoot you.”

Dream Moriarty, it appears, has a lot less tact that Real Moriarty.

“So I’ll die either way,” Sherlock clarifies. And then he says, “Shoot me. Go ahead. Shoot me.”

Moriarty lets out an infuriated groan. “Oh! You’re boring, Sherlock. So boring. When did you become so _boring_?” The _oh so smug_ smirk is back. Maybe it never left.

Sherlock feels a protest come to his lips, a threat or a dare or – _anything,_ but he hears John, so, so clearly, whisper, “I need you, Sherlock. _I need you_ to – to live.”

He smiles at Moriarty. “Shoot me.”

The gun fires.

Two milliseconds before the bullet hits him, the world spins and fades out to black. Just like in John’s tacky Hollywood movies, Sherlock thinks with a mental grimace, and slips back into the blissful not-quite-sleep.

*

    “John.”

Lestrade is the first to approach him. Brave, brave man. Stupid, stupid man.

“You need to sleep. John–”

“I can’t.” John’s voice is too rough, too slow. He feels like the world is moving in slow motion, like he’s hit the _pause_ button and the _play_ one has stopped working. “I can’t – I have to – I have to –”

He leans forward a little, resting his forehead against Sherlock’s chest. He’s breathing relatively calmly, if a little irregularly. He breathes in with Sherlock, breathes out with Sherlock.

And somewhere between the in and out breath, John Watson falls asleep.

*

The second day is one of the hardest. Sherlock stops breathing for almost a minute and his body begins to shut down. Then, in typical Sherlock fashion, he surges to life with a gush of _oomph,_ but doesn’t wake up.

The nurses and doctors tell John ‘extraordinary’ and ‘a real fighter’ and all sorts of distant comforts, but John is also a doctor and he _knows_ the likeliness of somebody surviving cocaine overdose as extreme as Sherlock’s.

Either way, he nods to all the doctors and smiles at all the nurses and when he grows too tired, he sleeps and when he grows too hungry, he eats. There is nothing more and nothing less – just Sherlock, the only thing the matters.

*

 The third day, Sherlock doesn’t even twitch. John lets out a breath of half-hearted relief.

The fourth and fifth and sixth day, Sherlock begins to decline so badly that the doctor looks at John and says, “I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t think he has very long left.”

John stares at the doctor. He wants to shout at them, at the nurses and the doctors and _people,_ for giving him false hope, but he knows perfectly well that Sherlock surviving this is so low – so low that...

He swallows. “How long?”

The doctor’s eyes are so sad John feels he might drown in the sadness. “Two days, we think, at the very least.” He turns to go, and then pauses. “I’m sorry about your boyfriend, Mr Watson. You must love him very much.

John starts, opens his mouth, begins “He wasn’t –” And then he stops. “Thank you, doctor.” The doctor nods to him and leaves.

John looks down at Sherlock’s uneasy expression, at the way his hair sticks to his face, at the tortured twist of his mouth, and thinks of the doctor’s words: _You must love him very much._

There, in the middle of a busy hospital, with nurses and doctors watching him and Mycroft watching through the glass panel, John Watson buries his head in Sherlock’s shoulder and cries.

*

“John,” Sherlock whispers through the darkness. “John.” It’s all he can say, like it’s the only word his lips know, the only thing that matters now.

An intake of breath. “Yes, Sherlock. I’m here, I’m here, fuck, I was so worried, Sherlock –”

Sherlock takes a deep breath, and, with every last ounce of his strength he has, he opens his eyes. They are full of tears. “I love you,” he whispers, and the words even surprise _him._ “I have always loved you, ever since the first day at the lab, when you walked in and didn’t hate me, didn’t think I was a freak.”

“Sherlock –” John starts, his eyes worried.

Sherlock shakes his head. “No, let me finish.” He takes another breath. His chest aches with the effort. “When Moriarty –” _cough_ “ – died in the blast, I thought things would finally be good for us, finally better. You make me feel more alive than I’ve ever felt, and I knew that even though you didn’t return my feelings, I would be happy just being around you.”

John swallows. “Sherlock, you idiot,” he rasps. “I love you. I love you so damn much.”

Sherlock’s answering smile would rival the brightness of the sun. “That’s good. That’s – that’s wonderful.” He closes his eyes. “That’s all I needed. Thank you.”

John grips Sherlock suddenly. “Needed? Needed for –” The monitors begin to stutter. _Beep... beep..._

_..._

_..._

“Help! Somebody – doctor! Please, please, please, oh God, no, no, please, _please_ –”

People come rushing in, men and women in blinding white clothing. They grasp at monitors, at Sherlock, yell words  that John would understand on any other day but just can’t seem to – to – _think –_

Mycroft moves up behind John, and his hand rests on John’s shoulder. John pretends not to see the tears on Mycroft’s cheeks, and Mycroft pretends not to notice the way John is folded in on himself as if physically in pain.

*

John walks into 221B Baker Street, his steps too slow, too lethargic. He sits down in a chair and stares at the wall. The Great Baker Street Flat - the flat the great Sherlock Holmes used to live with his side-kick, the incredible man and the ordinary one, the ones who survived when the odds were against them but lost in the face of humanity.

The flat, once home to the only consulting detective in history, the flat with which chemical explosions and toast could be made in the same day, incredible and ordinary.

Now just ordinary.

 


End file.
